Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz To Connect Via Advanced Sharing Network

Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, the three global carmakers have entered into an agreement to supply Here, a connected car expert company that they jointly own, with real-time sensor data collected by their cars to enable systems to better understand their surroundings.

This is the first time these leading brands have agreed to make a deal to share data. This is to begin a properly connected car industry. This technology will act as a catalyst to the rolling out of more autonomous technology.

Alex Mangan, product marketing manager for connected driving said, "We're showing for the first time how you can take the value of rich sensor data coming from a vehicle and use it to do things that positively impact safety and efficiency. To make the most of connected systems, we all as an industry need each other. The cars need sensor data, and with this kind of agreement a Toyota vehicle, for example, can have an understanding of what the JLR car saw down the road if everyone's involved.

Alex Mangan, product marketing manager for connected driving said, "We're showing for the first time how you can take the value of rich sensor data coming from a vehicle and use it to do things that positively impact safety and efficiency. To make the most of connected systems, we all as an industry need each other. The cars need sensor data, and with this kind of agreement a Toyota vehicle, for example, can have an understanding of what the JLR car saw down the road if everyone's involved.

"It's an interesting time because every single OEM knows that in order to do the things they want to do, they need to share data," he explained. "But when it comes to the actual implementation, they think they still need to differentiate, so their data isn't immediately comparable."

Mangan also said about the challenge of Here lies. "The data coming from a BMW 3 Series is very different from a BMW 5 Series, and then it's even more different from an Audi and Mercedes. Normalising data sets is therefore a massive challenge. We have to do a lot of processing in the cloud, and then make sense of that so the systems can say there's an actual hazard at this place at this time."

Dungan also said if more brands join into the agreement, the growth in available data will create a global cloud of information. Once it is normalised, it will essentially act as an Internet Of Things (IOT) for the automobile world.

Mangan explained, "We don't want to take over the world here, we want to help people put location context into their services. If that's with IOT data, with vehicle data or with traffic management data, we're interested."

"The automotive industry is just one area, but it's one of the most mature. When we talk about IOT in other sectors, it's something we can't always implement right now. But with cars the use cases are better defined, so it's a more mature conversation in automotive.

"There are not many companies that can do this on a global scale, and since understanding location is quickly becoming more and more important for so many devices, we're sitting at the crux of such a unique time on this planet.Our ambition is that we can help make this world a safer, more efficient place, as well as more technologically relevant to people."